Transfer created folders from webmail to computer

[PapaPiccolino]

Hi everyone.

My wife was borrowing a laptop from a friend. She has been using webmail during this time, and we have now finally got her a laptop to use, and we have returned her friends laptop. Whilst using the borrowed computer, she spent a bit of time setting up a whole bunch of folders on the webmail, sorting emails into various categories. Now that she has her own laptop (a MacBook Pro), she would like to be able to import these folders she created from the webmail into the Mail app. Is this possible, and if so, how would it be done ?

Thanks in advance.

 

[flaubert]

You don't mention who your email provider is, but for argument's sake let's assume that it is a standard IMAP based provider. If that is true, whatever arrangement of folders and folder contents you create using a webmail interface is going to become part of the data of your account, and when you connect to it using an IMAP client like Apple's Mail (or Thunderbird) the client should immediately show you the folder organization that you set up in the webmail. In other words, for a standard IMAP service you shouldn't have to do anything special.

I'm going to hedge here a little bit, because the world's most popular email service, Gmail, implements IMAP a little differently from the standard way, and the folders created in Gmail aren't really IMAP folders, they're more like labels or tags. I don't use Gmail, so unfortunately I can't speak to the problem if you are a Gmail user. I know that Thunderbird correctly interprets Gmail labels and shows email with certain labels as folders; see

Thunderbird and Gmail | Thunderbird Help

Thunderbird can be set up to work seamlessly with Google's Gmail. Messages will be synchronized between your local version of Thunderbird and web-based Gmail.

support.mozilla.org

 

[PapaPiccolino]

Hi flaubert. Thanks for your reply. I appreciate your time.

I do have a gmail account, but it is not relevant here. The email I asked about is from a regular ISP, not one of the big ones.

My wife currently has a pop3 account - can I have both a pop3 and imap sharing the same emails, or do I need to delete the pop3 account, and then set up a new imap account ? What happens to the pop3 emails already downloaded to her computer ?

Thanks again.

 

[PapaPiccolino]

It's ok. I got it sorted. I now have an imap account. All emails, folders, etc. present and accounted for.

Thanks.

 

[flaubert]

I'm glad that it worked out for you! Did you just have to set up Mail to talk to the mail server as an IMAP server, and then it was working? Some ISPs offer both interfaces.

 

[PapaPiccolino]

Thanks flaubert. Yes, as you say, I just set it all up through Mail, following the instructions from the ISP. The procedure seems pretty much the same as pop3, just changing a setting here or there.